


Warning! Are you gay?

by IceBreeze



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternative universe- Precure, Chuck is there but he's a magical time travelling baby, Friends to Lovers, Genderfluid Thomas, Hugtto! Precure AU, Janson is there in the background but he's not really important, M/M, Magical girl typical violence, Newt is a literal talking newt, Nonbinary Teresa, smidgens of found family, thomas and teresa are siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21808375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceBreeze/pseuds/IceBreeze
Summary: “Well,” said the newt that wasn’t actually a newt but also said its name was Newt so what was the truth, “that’s a bit of a simplified way to put it but you’re more or less right.”“Okay,” Thomas said, again, very carefully putting the baby down so as not to wake it. “I’m going to sleep and when I wake up it will be to find this was all a dream.”“That’s not how life works! You can’t just make things go away by ignoring them.”“Shut up, I’m not taking life advice from a dream.”In which Thomas is just trying to get through uni life when life throws a wrench he can't dodge at him that causes consequences(TM). In this case, the wrench is a magical time travelling baby and a talking newt that break into his house at 3am, and the consequences are becoming the protagonist of a magical girl series. But hey, it could be worse. At least he doesn't have to deal with romance on top of it, right?...right?
Relationships: Background Brenderesa and Benally, Minho/Thomas (Maze Runner), Newt & Thomas (Maze Runner), Teresa Agnes & Thomas & Brenda & Gally & Minho
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Maze Runner Secret Santa 2019





	Warning! Are you gay?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [unbelieve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbelieve/gifts).



> Merry Christmas Santeri, I hope you have an amazing holiday!!! This went a little off track from the original prompt and also grew alot bigger than planned but I hope you enjoy it!!! I couldn't find your ao3 for a while so I hope I gifted it to the right account.
> 
> (also a big thank you to the organisers of this event- hopefully you both have great holidays as well!!)

There is a baby sitting on Thomas’s bed.

It is not his baby (or at least, that's what he thinks ( ✧≖ ͜ʖ≖)), nor is he even sure it is a human baby, but it is there and it just did the shooting star equivalent of breaking into his house.

There is a baby sitting on Thomas's bed and it fell from the sky.

Next to the baby is a newt, which also fell from the sky and is talking to him. Since Thomas is eighty percent sure newts shouldn’t be able to talk and also that his window was closed ten seconds ago, he was what might politely be called ‘more confused than someone who sat down on the toilet only to find that the lid was down.’ He's not sleep deprived enough to have lost his grasp on reality (though to be fair, if he was then he wouldn't exactly be aware of the fact), and if this is a hallucination then it's certainly one of the weirder ones he's ever experienced.

There is a talking newt sitting on Thomas's bed and it fell from the sky.

Was he really hallucinating again? It was possible, and not just cause of plot convenience- Brenda, for all that she was dating the most lawful good person in the world, had a tendency to do illicit experiments in her bedroom and on one notable occasion she accidentally filled the entire house with fumes that had the same effect as LSD. Teresa had threatened to break up with her if she ever did it again so he had hoped that’d be the end of his hallucination escapades but, alas. Either she's back on her bullshit again, he's having a very realistic dream, or somewhere out there in the world a person is sitting at a computer and deciding to inconvenience him for sport.

You and I both know which is the truth, dear reader, and that is this:

A baby and a talking newt fell from the sky, as babies and newts are prone to doing, and Thomas needs to pull the protagonists halo out from his ass and use it for once in his life, the absolute buffoon.

“If I’d known I’d known this was gonna melt my last braincell then I’d have gone to the party with everyone instead of staying in to suffer,” he said to himself, rubbing a hand across his eyes.

 _(French_. If he’d known the exams were going to have a speaking portion he'd have saved himself the pain and chosen a module actually related to his course but no, here he is suffering over revision at 3am).

“Oh you actually have braincells to melt? Shocking,” said the newt, and wow, rude. Only two people gets to say that to him and that’s because one is his sibling and the other will probably become his sister-in-law sometime before they've graduated.

“Couldn't I have had a dream that was actually nice," he grumbled, as if seeking guidance from some kind of deity. Sadly for him the only thing he has is a fanfiction writer who is trying to entertain and considering that this story has already grown legs and bench pressed me into the ground, I'm not about to bend it more just to give him a tiny smidgen of denial. There's no brainwashing and his friends aren't dead yet so he should be grateful, really. He should be grateful for a lot of things, and yes, the talking newt is on that list.

If newts could roll their eyes then that is probably what would be happening right now, and it turned to the baby. “You couldn’t have chosen someone who was less of a twat?”

The baby gurgled and made grabby hands toward Thomas. When he didn't magically end up in its grasp, it decided a more DIY approach was needed and started to crawl towards him. Of course, this meant it nearly fell off the bed and Thomas had to dive to catch it, hitting his head on said bed in the process. It hurt in the same way that making yourself a cup of tea only to find the milk was off hurts, and the baby pulling at his cheek didn't help things.

"I hope you're happy," he said. Considering that the baby's response was to giggle and pat his face with tiny hands, it probably was. And yes, sure, it was adorable and Thomas’ heart melted a little at the sight, but that wasn’t the point. The point is that he’s a history student with assignments due tomorrow (or today, as the case may be) and there’s a talking Newt and a baby in his bedroom when they definitely shouldn’t be there.

(Yes, this is a statement that has been repeated a fuck ton of times already, but the alternative is the steady stream of question marks that is Thomas's thoughts and trust me when I say you wouldn't want to read that).

“Huh.” The newt had its head cocked to the side, looking about as curious as a newt can. “I stand corrected- maybe you are the right choice for the job after all.”

_“What job?!”_

“To become one of the Legendary warriors- Precure _._ ”

“…what?”

The newt sighed and crawled up to his shoulder, settling there with a flick of its tail. “Let’s start from the beginning, then.”

Cue one very long explanation filled with a lot of exposition that the author isn’t going to bore you or herself with, and Thomas had been briefed on the grand mess that was the WCKD corporation and time travel and fairies and weird magic that sounds like it came from some kind of anime.

“Okay,” Thomas said, slowly, like his mind wasn’t rapidly cycling between ???????????????, !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and the kind of blankness he usually only gets during social situations. “Okay, so what you’re telling me is that this baby is the only thing standing between us and the end of the world, you’re not actually a newt, and you want me to help because this baby has decided that I have some kind of power in my that will let me transform into a magic thingymebob that can fight of this wicked thing with the power of friendship?”

“Well,” said the newt that wasn’t actually a newt but also said its name was Newt so what was the truth, “that’s a bit of a simplified way to put it but you’re more or less right.”

“Okay,” Thomas said, again, very carefully putting the baby down so as not to wake it. “I’m going to sleep and when I wake up it will be to find this was all a dream.”

“That’s not how life works! You can’t just make things go away by ignoring them.”

“Shut up, I’m not taking life advice from a dream.”

Like with all lifes problems, Thomas had hoped he’d wake to find it had magically disappeared in the night.

Like with all of lifes problems, this did not happen, and both the baby and newt were still very much there.

“Good morning,” Newt the newt said, far too cheerily considering that it was too early to be alive, “are you ready to face the truth now?”

Thomas, staring up at the ceiling and wishing it would fall down on him, wondered what he’d done wrong to deserve this.

“Fuck,” he said so very eloquently. Honestly, somebody get this man a nobel prize for poetry, he deserves it. Newt started laughing at him because of course he did, and the sound woke up the baby, who yawned a wide, gummy yawn. Thomas sat up carefully, mindful of the fact that there was a baby currently on his chest and that if it started crying he’d have to have a really awkward conversation with his housemates and that was not a place he wanted to go any time in the next five years, thank you very much.

“Can’t you just choose someone else?”

“Nope! He chose you which means you’re one of the ones with the power we need. Look, he even made a gift for you!”

True enough there was some kind of bejeweled compact thing sitting next to his pillow, and when he picked it up tingles ran down his arm, like the kind of feeling when your legs have gone dead and the blood has to get used to flowing through them again. It was quite a nice compact, very bejeweled and very pink. It even had a functioning mirror and everything. Thomas wasn't really sure why the baby was giving it to him, or even as to why it was in the possession of a baby, but what's one more question mark to the mountain.

“Huh. It’s very nice, thank you baby.”

“When the time comes, that’ll be what you use to transform.”

“That is less nice, but okay, I can live with this I guess.”

Newt snorted, and crawled up Thomas’ arm to try and perch on his head, apparently deciding the best route for this was up his face and neck.

“You won’t be alone, if it helps. There are others who can help in finding Tomorrow Power, so you won’t be a precure alone.”

“This is going to be a disaster, you realise that.”

“Don’t worry, you’ve just gotta help keep the baby safe whilst fighting off WCKD and their attempts to spread darkness, and hide this from everyone you know. You’re a smart one, you’ll be able to figure it out, and you’ve got me to help you do it.”

 _This is fine_ , Thomas thought, with the desperation of someone who knows it is not. _This is fine._

It will not surprise you to discover that it was not fine, my dear reader, because if it was this would be a very boring story and there is nothing worse than a boring story. It was not and never would be fine because at that moment Minho burst through the door to his room. This was not a particularly rare occurrence, nor was it one Thomas usually minded all too much; Minho’s inability to knock was a staple in this house and one they’d all learnt to get used to for the sake of their sanity. Usually all it meant is that Minho would just get a sigh, but sometimes he’d use his special skill called Finding People In Compromising Positions, like that one time he walked in to find Thomas using every kind of tarot and oracle deck he had in a desperate attempt to help him with homework.

Or like that time he caught Teresa eating Gally’s basil plant whilst crying in the middle of their third week of placement.

Or like that time he found Gally trying to build the Eiffel tower from Brenda’s stash of breadsticks.

Or like now, when he finds Thomas standing in the middle of the room holding a baby in his arms as Newt puts a foot in his eye. If someone were to take a picture of the moment it would probably have won an award; Thomas frozen in place whilst Minho takes in the whole scene with the confusion of someone who’d thought they were going to be able to leisurely piss but found that all the toilets in that building were out of order. In his hand sits a cup of steaming coffee in Thomas’ favourite mug and in any different circumstance Thomas would have been delighted (though to be fair he’s always delighted to see Minho, coffee or no), but in this case they’re all simply lucky Minho hasn’t dropped it.

That is to say, it was a disaster and you best get some popcorn.

“Thomas,” Minho said, “Bro. Pal. My friend. The Maestro to my orchestra, the tweedle dee to my tweedle dum, the only one of my heart- what the actual fuck?”

Now the thing to note about Thomas is that he is very smart but in very specific areas, and it just so happens that lying to your friend to explain your accidental baby acquisition is not one of those areas. So he blurts, “Congratulations, you’re the father,” which. Well, it’s not his finest moment.

(He can feel Newt snickering at him, the little shit).

Minho frowns. “Wow bro, that was a terrible lie, I’m almost disappointed in you,” And then, without waiting for an answer cause Minho is also a little shit and Thomas has no idea why he likes him, he turns and yells, “Teresa, did you know Thomas has a kid?”

There’s a moment of silence and then all hell breaks loose. Teresa appears in the door after channeling their inner sonic, shoulder checking Minho so they can get in, and then they stop. Stare for one moment, two, three, not blinking, like Thomas was holding a bomb and this was in a different world with zombies and serious names for things.

“Minho,” they said.

“Yes?”

“Punch me.”

He did, with far more eagerness than appropriate (apparently he still hadn't forgiven them for eating the ice cream he'd been saving), and they hiss. “Okay it hurt so it’s not a dream." A pause. "I don’t know if I like that.”

There’s a loud bang that is the sound of Brenda running into something and then she too appears in the door, looking more awake than Thomas has ever seen her when she’s hungover. Or even when she's not hungover, actually- Brenda has never been what you could call a morning person.

“Huh,” Brenda said, sounding impressed, “That’s an actual baby.”

“Thomas,” Teresa said, apparently having recovered from their shock, and he straightened nervously because that voice was the Doctor voice. It had always been effective on him as a child and it was still effective now, though his Reckless Little Shit **™** energy was much stronger than their Lawful energy could ever be. “Why do you have a child?”

“Um." A pause for dramatic effect, both because the author likes them and also because Thomas's brain currently has the dial turned to dumbass. "It flew in through my window last night?”

“That’s such a bad lie it’s almost believable,” Minho says, as if he is a better liar himself and isn't more of a 'punch first, ask questions later' kind of guy.

Of course, that is the moment Newt decided to say, “It’s true ,” and jumps from Thomas’ shoulder. There’s an explosion of smoke and then the talking newt is suddenly a particularly twinky human. “My name is Newt, me and the baby are from the future, and we need your help to stop the end of the world.”

There is a moment of silence. And then Teresa yelled, with enough volume to wake the neighbours, “House meeting in the kitchen right now!”

They waited until they heard the thump that indicated Gally had fallen out of bed and nodded, leading the charge downstairs. Thomas follows at the more sedate pace of someone who does not want to be there, and Newt matches his pace, the gammy leg still present in this form.

“It’ll be fine, Thomas,” Newt says, which Chuck echoes with a giggle, and Thomas tries not to think about all the ways in which it could very much not be.

They have to sit in deeply uncomfortable silence for a while because this fic is already growing sentience and the author isn't going to feed it by adding a whole ass scene, but eventually Gally finally emerges, a blanket wrapped around him like he’s trying to become a human caterpillar. 

(And maybe he is; The Very Hungry Caterpillar was his favourite book up until the age fifteen, to the point that he would dress up as the titular character at every given opportunity. He still has the costume and everything).

“Why are we having a house meeting-“ he starts, around a yawn, only to pause in both as he locks eyes with the baby. This is a very valid reaction considering that there definitely was not a baby in the house yesterday and there is absolutely no logical reason for there to be a baby here now. Of course, the author does not really give a shit about logic anymore than they do radishes, but alas, poor Gally has no way of knowing this. Poor Gally has no way of knowing anything beyond what the author wants him to know, and currently that is very little at all.

Gally stared at the baby. The baby stared at Gally. Gally stared at the baby. The baby stared at Gally.

“Thomas, you dumb slut,” he said, still engaged in a staring contest with a baby, “I always knew you were the protagonist to something, but I didn’t expect you were the next Virgin Mary.”

“Rude.” Thomas said, with all the mock offense of a theatre kid who was going to exploit the hell out of it in their daily life, “I’m far too pretty to be Mary.”

Minho snickered, nodding sagely. “It’s true,” he agreed, “Thomas is far too pretty to be compared to someone like that.”

Thomas blows a kiss at Minho and Minho pretends to swoon, fluttering his eyelashes like a maiden in a very heteronormative fairytale. Newt glances between the two of them with a furrow between his brows like he’s recognized something here but doesn’t quite know what to call it, which- mood. The baby had apparently grown tired of looking at Gally (something Thomas could relate to; there were days where he wished he didn’t have to see Gally’s face).

“Okay,” Brenda said, taking charge because she was the one who’d downed three cups of coffee in the time it took Gally to surface, “First order of business- what the fuck is this whole-" her question cut off and she gestured at Newt and the baby, pretty much demonstrating the mood in the kitchen on this day at this time in this fic.

“Uhhhhhhh, I’m still not entirely sure. They kind of yeeted in through my bedroom window yesterday and the explanation I was provided didn’t make much sense beyond time travel and fighting evil with the power of tomorrow.”

Newt scoffed. “It made perfect sense. You’re just a fool.”

“Whilst I do not deny that Thomas is a fool, none of this makes sense so far, Mr. Talking-Newt-that definitely-should-not-exist.”

Newt once again launches into a very long, very flashback explanation that the author will not type out because that would require to committing to more than the author is willing to at this point in the fic. It is not a very interesting explanation, at least, but it told them about how WCKD corporation took over the world and Precure are the only ones who can fight them with Tomorrow Power and they were able to travel back in time to try and stop WCKD but it caused the only remaining Precure to turn into a baby and also the apocalypse happened somewhere in the whole mess.

You know, all that good shit.

“Okay,” Brenda said, after everyone kind of stared at eachother for an extended period of ???????? “So Thomas wasn’t on the dumbass side of the scale for once, because this explanation makes no sense at all.”

“Thank you!” Thomas said, at the same time the baby made a gurgling noise and then four more of the bejewelled things appeared from a burst of light, landing delicately on the laps of three of Thomas' housemates. Teresa, apparently the outlier, got hit in the head by it with enough force to knock them off their chair, a scene that the baby apparently delighted in. It was unclear as to why this magical time travelling baby would want to hurt Teresa, but it did, and for a moment there it looked like Brenda might throw hands with an infant. Looking at their face, you wouldn't think that Teresa was offended, but the thing you need to know about Teresa is that they have mastered the art of poker face. They could be planning a murder or a proposal and you wouldn't be able to tell jack shit from looking at them.

(Another thing you need to know: Newt is also a master of the poker face, and the look he cast at Teresa was one you'd need a hell of a lot more than foreshadowing to decipher).

“Oh look,” Thomas said, with all the delight of someone who had just discovered they weren't alone in this hell. “Turns out we’re all precure. Isn’t that convenient?”

It was very convenient. It’s almost as if someone planned it that way to make progression easier. But that would be silly, and besides, it’s not like the characters are aware of stuff like that. In fact, the characters aren’t really aware of anything beyond their absolute bone deep horror of realizing what kind of situation came flying in through their window. Minho is eying the preheart like it had personally insulted him and everyone he had ever cared about ever, which is pretty over the top. After all, when it comes down to it, being one of the main characters in a precure anime is definitely one of the safer positions to be in. It’s not like anyone put him and his friends through intensive trauma and then wiped their memories and locked them all in a murder maze in a very ineffectual attempt to save the world, right? That would just be awful.

So yeah, being told by a talking newt that you’re a magical girl is definitely one of the better outcomes of this and he should appreciate that.

“I don’t suppose you can find other people to do this?” Thomas asks. 

“If anyone could be a precure then the future wouldn’t have turned into the disaster it was.” Newt’s expression was that of a man who had found the saviours he’d been hoping to find and was sorely considering asking for a refund. “Like it or not, you five are the chosen ones and that means I’m gonna need you to save the fucking world, thanks.”

There was another moment of silence, Minho’s face scrunched up more than a piece of paper, and then Teresa asked, “How bad was the future?”

“Bad enough that we needed to travel back in time.” He said no more about it and he didn’t really need to, considering that whatever kind of place your mind could take you from that statement, it wasn’t going to be a good one. The five housemates exchanged looks, doing their best attempt at silent communication (an art some of them had mastered, some of them had not), whilst Newt fidgeted with his necklace, staring pensively at the wall with the kind of stare of someone remembering not cool things. It was, all in all, a not very good atmosphere and nobody was particularly having a good time- the writer included, because it is a pain in the ass to keep such an atmosphere up and there is only so long one scene can go on before you run out of imagery.

Which is why, at that particular moment on this particular day in this particular story, the baby is the true saviour of the day. Apparently bored with the conversation, he wormed his way out of Thomas’ grip to crawl onto Minho. This, quite naturally, meant there was a moment of panicked shouting as Minho had to catch him from the air before he fell, but the baby seemed happy, giggling as he pulled at Minho’s cheeks.

“Ouch,” Minho said, or at least tried to. It’s a little hard to talk when you’ve got a baby pulling your face apart. Fortunately for him, the baby soon got bored (as babies are prone to), and they were able to settle him into a doze on Mino’s lap.

“Does he have a name?” Brenda asked. Everyone turned to Newt, pointedly echoing the question with just their eyes. Newt shrugs.

“I only knew he was Cure Tomorrow before he sent us back and now he’s kind of a baby.”

“Well do you know who his parents are?”

Newt gave them all a Look that said more about how his views on their collective intelligence was dropping than anything about the question. If he lingered on Minho and Thomas at all then, well- that must be because they are the ones who had so far disappointed him the most. It has absolutely nothing to do with the way the baby is currently sleeping on Minho’s lap, one hand grasping onto Thomas’ sleeve. It has absolutely nothing to do with the way Newt’s expression softens at the sight, as if he’s seeing something familiar in a way that heals wounds that he didn’t know had been there.

It has absolutely nothing to do with any of this except for all the ways that it does.

“Yes, I know who his parents are,” Newt said, “Sadly, they wouldn’t remember his name now since they haven’t adopted him yet.” And then, after a pause, “Y’all may as well name him as I’ve never been great at naming.”

And, well- nobody really knew what to say to that, so they didn’t. They just kind of sat quietly, mulling over their limited capacity for naming.

“We could google the most popular baby names?” Teresa suggested, after a couple of minutes. It was unanimously rejected.

“What about Yeet?" Brenda threw into the open, after ten minutes of bickering. "It's appropriate considering how he came to be here.”

"We're not naming a child Yeet," Teresa said, at the exact same time Thomas said, "I love it." 

"Chuck?" Gally offered, striking gold for once in his life. "Same sentiment but more of a name."

They all looked at eachother and looked at the baby and then back at eachother, before nodding.

“That’s actually not awful,” Newt says, prompting a deeply offended noise from Gally, “I’m surprised.”

“Hey little guy,” Minho said, patting Chuck’s tiny hand with his, “Your name is Chuck, now. What do you think?”

Chuck’s only response was to sniffle, tightening his grip on Minho’s shirt.

“Wait, Thomas- don’t you have a French seminar in half an hour?” Teresa said, and Thomas reacted with the same kind of horror as when you put small, innocent ghosts in a canon and fired them out of a go kart at high speeds. He hadn't even finished the work due in today, and being late on top of that? No thank you, that's more of a nightmare than suddenly waking up in a maze surrounded by spider dick demons. He was up and out of his chair with all the power of his inner sonic, sprinting from the room to the soundtrack of Gally’s cackling.

And then, as he was stuffing his bag, he heard Teresa say: “I don’t know why you’re laughing- you’re in his class, Mr.Big shot Drama student.”

There was a moment of complete silence, and then the very satisfying sound of Gally swearing loudly, followed by him attempting to break the stairs.

Needless to say, it was an eventful morning and being late to class was really the least of it.

The professor didn’t even blink twice at the two of them running in ten minutes late- they were quiet and turned up at all, so it didn’t really matter.

Thomas not doing the work, on the other hand? That was a bit more of an issue.

“A baby and a newt crashed through my window, rendering me unable to finish for mental health reasons,” he said, very honestly.

When the professor frowned, Gally dove in with a support: “Can confirm, professor; the baby and newt have been causing quite a disturbance. Nobody is quite sure what to make of them.”

The professor stared at the two of them for a very long time before shaking his head. “At least the two of you are inventive with your explanations,” he sighed, and left it at that to go and help the person who was quietly crying over their work in the corner.

Thomas and Gally discreetly fistbumped under the table, and that was really the only eventful part of that seminar.

On the way back home Gally abruptly paused in his steps, tilting his head to the side like he was trying to imitate a dog in more than just eyebrow. “By the way, is the boy streak still going or has it changed? You didn’t get to do the Thing today because it was a shit show.”

Thomas had been a little caught up in all the chaos of the day to even register that gender existed (finding a magic baby tended to that to you), but at Gally’s reminder he paused to think about it. It was always weird to have to search for what feels right but here he is now, going through all the genders to find which one he is right this moment because apparently someone somewhere decided he needed to take the pokemon ‘catch ‘em all’ approach.

(“Damnit Thomas,” Teresa would always joke, “You’ve stolen all my genders.”)

“Yeah,” he said, eventually. “Still going.”

“Hell yeah! Just three more days and then Brenda will owe me thirty quid.”

“Twenty two, you mean. I take a twenty five percent cut of everything, remember?”

“Twenty two, then. Either way, it’ll make me a rich man!”

“Says the guy with the shadiest sugar daddy to ever exist.”

“…okay first of all, he's technically your sugar daddy too- ”

Upon arriving home, the first thing they did was yeet to the kitchen where they found Brenda, Newt and Teresa sitting at the table together. This was not, in and off itself, unusual. The three of them were in the same house, for all that Newt's appearance was both recent and unusual, and sharing a house meant often sharing a space. It was the companionable thing to do, after all, and this was a house full of companionable people. So no, it was not unusual for Newt to be hanging out with Thomas' housemates.

What was unusual was the fact that they were doing something very stupid. They were playing monopoly, a game that had been banned from the household with all the wisdom of their collective three braincells, all the boards being purged with some very literal fire. The last time they'd ever played it had almost been enough to break every bond to be found under this roof, along with some parts of the actual roof itself.

(Minho proved that he would stop at nothing for hotels and also landed on free parking way too many times to be legal, Teresa was holding the stations and utilities hostage, Brenda owned about half the board, Gally started out cheating badly and the penalties he was given got him drunk enough that he started crying over how much the Monopoly man reminded him of Ben and eventually had to drop off the game so he could inform Ben himself of this, Thomas had also cheated but she did it successfully. The game had ended with a face off between Brenda and Minho fierce enough that they wouldn’t talk to each other for three days.

Monopoly was banned for a reason and that was because it ruined friendships).

“And I thought you were the braincell, Teresa,” Thomas said, leaning against the back of Teresa’s chair to peer down at the apparently homemade board. They reached up and grasped his hand with one of theirs, a stand-in for the hug that they don’t want to stand up for. Newt glanced at the gesture, thoughtful, and then back at the board, no doubt balancing playing the hellhole that is monopoly with the particularly painful task of trying to figure out What The Fuck is going on in this house.

(At least it put them all on an even playing field, as the concept of time travelling babies and magical girls was still very new).

“I am,” they said, with the kind of smugness you could only get by suffering through the torture that is a med degree. “And so we decided to deal with this strange mess by bringing up something even messier- hence, monopoly.”

“Apparently dealing through things with denial is a genetic trait,” Newt said. 

“Yeah, that checks out,” Gally adds, because Gally always feel the need to add things, even if he’s currently preoccupied with something- like finding where the whiteboard pen went. “Though to be fair, it may just be a student thing. There’s more denial in this one house than there is in Egypt.” A pause, with more fruitless rummaging, then, “Aha! That’s where the dick was.”

“I didn’t know Ben was in our kitchen drawer,” Teresa said, carefully moving her wheelbarrow to Go and claiming her spoils.

“God, I wish.” Whiteboard pen found, Gally completed his mission of rubbing out the date from ‘THOMAS HAS BEEN A [HE] FOR [1 MONTH, 27 DAYS]’ so he could change it to ‘1 MONTH, 28 DAYS (SUCK IT BRENDA)’. He completed the action by twirling around and dropping the whiteboard pen like it was a mic. “Suck it Brenda,” he repeated verbally, just to emphasise the statement.

“Oh, fuck you, Gally,” Brenda said, upon seeing the addition. “Thomas, I trusted you.”

“Sorry Bren,” he said, “Being a guy is just a lot of joy at the moment, apparently.”

“Babe, you knew my brother has to be chaotic in everything, even gender,” Teresa said.

“Damn right I am.” And then, after a pause, “Where’s Chuck?”

“With Minho.” They smiled. “He had to do first diaper change and spend twenty minutes trying to catch Chuck as he tried to explore at every given opportunity.”

Gally snorted, unceremoniously sitting on the countertop because he’s gay and it’s the law that one gay needs to be on the countertop at all times. “Please tell me you got that on video.”

Brenda, because her middle name is Ultimate Badass, waves her phone in the air to give him a glimpse of the twenty-five minute long video titled ‘Minho shrieking the remix.’ “What do you take me for- of course I got the video.”

“All hail the Brenda.”

“All hail the Brenda,” Teresa and Thomas echoed, and she laughed like she was auditioning for the villain role on a broadway show.

Newt, apparently either growing used to their idiocy or just more focused on winning, chose that moment to turn all his houses in to hotels like the little shit he was. The ensuing outburst from both Brenda and Teresa was very loud, very pissed, and also very short as they all remembered that there was a baby in the house and babies had a tendency to cry at loud noises. And nobody- I repeat, nobody- wanted to deal with a crying baby.

(Babies can only keep crying at progressively louder volumes until you fix whatever upset them. At least when they deal with eachother crying they’re capable of speech so the whole process involves less frantic flailing. Unless it’s in that season approaching the end of the year where everyone is slowly crumbling under the pressure, in which case it becomes quite common to find them all piled in a blanket fort with enough comfort food to feed an army as if it will protect them from the insidious creeping of time and responsibility.

There are no adults at this time, only the Hungry, the Tired, and the Stressed).

So yes, none of them are exactly equipped for dealing with crying babies considering that they’ve barely been alive for a fifth of their mortal life span. This, quite naturally, meant that the house was immediately filled with the sound of wailing.

A moment passed, then two, then three, the five of them staring at each other in horror as the sound of footsteps started pounding like they were trying to break the floor and the wailing grew closer.

Then Newt said, “Oh fuck,” and Thomas barely had a second to think ‘oh, mood’ before Minho burst through the door with his arms full of crying baby.

“You all suck,” Minho declared, multitasking as he both glared at them and tried to soothe Chuck. Newt and Thomas also rose to help, and soon there was just a crowd of twenty somethings doing their best to figure out how to make the Chuck calm down. It was quite a valiant effort, all things considered- definitely at least a B.

Chuck, however, had different ideas, as he would not stop crying. If anything he started crying harder, and then the heart thing on his forehead started to glow pink, and then-

-the screaming started, and everything went wrong quicker than someone with diarrhea can shit.

Was it in bad taste for Newt to say ‘I told you so’? Yes.

Did he say it anyway? Also yes.

“I told you so!” he yelled, from where he was holding a still crying Chuck in his arms as out of the way of the danger as he can get them without straight up leaving the scene. A barrier held up by whatever fairy magic he has is wrapped around them utterly obliterating any debris or attacks rained down upon them. The attacks in question were coming from some kind of giant textbook with arms that looked like it belonged in a cartoon.

(Overall it had no right to be as horrifying as it was, considering that it was yelling about exams and how nothing mattered as it attempted to kill them, but alas. Things just be like that sometimes).

So yeah, funnily enough Newt was telling the truth and the WCKD Corporation was actually a thing out to kill them all. _Negative Energy_ and _Tomorrow power_ may be the kind of names you’d expect in a kids show, but they were real and one of them was being used to kill them by a man who summoned a thing through the power of spontaneous dance.

The good news was that the five of them could fight the Oshimaida!

The bad news was the five of them could fight the Oshimaida.

“Nobody said this was some magical girl kind of bullshit!” yelled Brenda, otherwise known as Cure Gun as she filled the Oshimaida with bullets that are filled with the power of friendship. If you were to just walk in on this scene then it would be very difficult to tell that this is Brenda, considering that using the magic made her hair blue and a lot longer than any sane person would ever have it. “I want a refund!”

The fact that no response came wasn’t because nobody agreed but because everyone was trying not to die. Gally- or Cure Smash- swung his giant hammer like a baseball bat to knock away the pen-shaped missiles that came near him, somehow managing to make the combination of frills and bows and blonde pigtails this cursed magic gave him intimidating.

Teresa (or Cure Stab, as she was aptly named) stabbed the Oshimaida in the leg, casting some magic spell that sent a barrage of swords raining down on it, the attack backed up by Minho (Cure Fist) coming flying in as a whirl of mild anger issues and green and punching it hard enough to send it flying into a building. Brenda winced at the sight of it and shouted, “Can’t you be careful with the collateral damage!”

As if in response to this declaration (which honestly wouldn’t be surprising, considering he is fair too good at figuring trouble out to not be some kind of bloodhound) Thomas landed next to her, pink skirts and pinker hair fluttering gracefully as he does. And then, in accordance with his name of Cure Bomb, he pulls the clip off of one of his magical grenades and chucks it at the Oshimaida.

The explosion that follows is far more pink than Brenda thinks it is meant to go but eh- nothing about this situation makes sense, so what’s one more peculiarity to add to the pot?

“Together! Synchronise your Tomorrow Power together for a friendship attack,” Newt yells, like the mentor character in a magical girl anime. And because that appears to be what their life is becoming, they do and the Oshimaida is purified.

What remains behind is a university student (actually Brenda knows her from somewhere) who is now taking a nap in the middle of a street and some kind of glowing spoon that is floating above Thomas’ hand. A flurry of purple signals Teresa landing beside them, sword still clutched in their hand as they squint at the spoon like it might grow teeth.

“Is this going to end with some kind of punchline about being spoon fed?” they ask, as Minho and Gally join them all on Brenda’s chosen rooftop.

“I hope not,” Minho says, frowning down at his skirts. “Also how come nobody told me skirts were this comfortable? I’m kind of loving this.”

“Mood,” Thomas said, twirling around like this was the best thing he’s ever worn in his life. “This is my aesthetic and I love it.”

Gally immediately pulled out his phone and started typing.

“Please tell me that you’re not texting that to Ben.”

“I could but I have a rule of not lying,” Gally said, and then jumped back laughing when Thomas attempted to grab the phone from him. What followed was a very short and far more animated version of keep away, considering Gally was a fast typer and also they could now jump over buildings as easily as they can piss.

“Damn it Gally,” Thomas said when his inevitable defeat came. Gally slung an arm around his shoulder, smug as smug can be.

“Just suck it up. My Sugar Daddy is my friends Sugar Daddy, and he’s been dying to deliver on his promise.”

"It was a joke! Not a promise!"

"To him it was a promise, so just suck it up and let him love you in his weird way of buying you more things that you ever needed or wanted."

“Why did he choose to date you, again?” but there was no bite to the question, just the fondness of well worn words between people who’ve had this interaction many times before.

The laugh that Gally let out was as loud as Brenda’s farts after she has dairy, and Newt gives them a funny look from where he is now standing on the roof, Chuck in his arms.

(Apparently his fairy powers include being able to climb walls like they’re stairs, though he does keep a careful eye on the edge of the roof and stay away from it. Perhaps the magic doesn’t extend to preventing falls?)

“Did you get the Tomorrow Power?” Newt asks.

“Uhhh, we got a magic spoon?” Minho says, still holding it exactly as he had been when Thomas shoved it at him. Chuck babbles, tiny hands reaching for the spoon like it’s the best thing he’s seen in his very short life.

What follows is probably one of the strangest lessons in feeding babies Thomas has ever witnessed and he is pretty sure they’re not supposed to work like that. Normalcy returns very quickly, following this- Chuck is quiet once more, napping contentedly in Newt’s arms, their cosplay esque outfits disappear, and any trace of the textbook monster’s existence fades like it had never been there in the first place.

None of this changes that past twenty four hours though, leaving them all to uncomfortably digest the fact that maybe- just maybe- this is all real.

“I need a drink,” Teresa declares, and their hand opens and closes uselessly like they wish they still had their sword so they could stab something. Being as smooth as she is, Brenda takes this opportunity to slip her hand right in their, tangling their fingers together. Teresa shoots her a small smile, and its very cute.

So quite naturally Thomas has to fulfill his siblingly duty by calling, “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaay,” a chorus soon echoed by all five of them like a cult performing their daily prayer.

“I don’t know you people,” Newt says, trying and failing to feign disgust. They can all see his smile, and soon there’s a very gentle dogpile on a roof in the middle day.

Monopoly drinking games make a reappearance that night for the sake of disconnecting from reality but its soon forgotten as they all get utterly wardrobed.

“You looked amazing with a sword,” Brenda says, her fifth glass of coke and vodka being used as a prop for gesturing. It’s a miracle she doesn’t spill any, as the rug under them was not the kind that could easily hide stains. Teresa flips their hair in response, face very flushed from going to jail so many times.

“Naturally,” they say, with all the poise of a drama student without any of the actual theatre training, “Whilst you were being cisgender I was busy studying the blade.”

They high five Thomas from across the board and then he falls back into the half-cuddle, half-lean he and Minho had been keeping up for most of the night. He accidentally elbows Minho in the leg but Minho is drunk enough that he doesn’t seem to notice, only giggling and pressing a badly aimed kiss to Thomas’ forehead that Thomas returns with one to the cheek.

“Two bros sitting in a hot tub, zero feet apart because they’re both gay,” Brenda sings, and Teresa starts cackling. Minho and Thomas both join in after a few seconds, and that puts most of the group out of action for a good three minutes. Gally fell asleep half an hour ago, thankfully when they were all still sober enough to get him upstairs and into bed. Chuck had been put to bed in Thomas’ room, just as peaceful as he was after chowing down on some friendship magic or whatever it was called.

This left poor Newt as the only sober person in the room. He didn’t like alcohol, which was valid, leaving him with the kind of receipts that only come from watching drunk people do drunk people things.

(It also left him with questions, but those wouldn’t be getting answers until everyone was sober- and even then, it’s doubtful. With people like these you never know exactly how smart they’re going to be about a given topic at any given time and from both the stories and the interactions they’ve had so far, Newt can tell that this is a massive risk when dealing with a person whose name starts with _T_ and ends with _homas_ ).

Since Thomas is a magical creature who never gets hangovers and Newt hadn’t drunk at all, the two of them were the only ones functional the next day. This, of course, got them the fun responsibility of being Chuck’s caretakers. Which meant that Thomas had to learn how to change a diaper.

“This is one of the grossest things I’ve ever done in my life,” he said, to his audience of one and a half as he wished to spontaneously lose all ability to smell.

“Better get used to it,” Newt said, as if he was some expert in the art of dealing with gross stuff and Thomas was merely a plebian at his feet. The effect was kind of ruined by the way he was standing on the ceiling on the other side of the bathroom (and it’s a big bathroom).

Chuck giggled as Thomas put on the new diaper, probably the only one having a good time here, and then patted his cheek when Thomas picked him up, babbling in that way babies do. It may have been enlightening if not for the fact that Thomas wasn’t fluent in baby and thus couldn’t really respond.

Still, he smiled, pressing a kiss to Chuck’s forehead. “Who’s a good baby,” he cooed, and received giggling in response, another pat to his cheek. And then, in a normal human voice, because Newt may currently be a newt but he is still like 50% human inside, probably, “You best hope people are awake by three because otherwise you’re on your own.”

“Why?”

“I have class? I am a uni student, you realise.”

If newts had ears then Newt’s would be pricking. “Class? Can I come with you?”

“Wha-“

As you can guess, Thomas tries to argue against this, because Thomas has self preservation and doesn’t need an audience to him struggling through a seminar. Unfortunately for him, Newt is very hard to argue with, and so when it hits two thirty Thomas is walking out of the house with a newt hiding in the lining of his jacket, a very grumpy Brenda saddled with baby duty.

When it came down to it, Thomas’ saving grace was the fact that all uni students were too busy trying to survive the day to focus too hard on anyone else. Newt went unnoticed, even as he muttered comments to Thomas throughout the seminar and then the lecture that followed, and generally seemed to have a good time.

Which of course meant Newt asked if he could come to more of Thomas’ classes. Attempting to refuse was futile from the start, Thomas knew that, but he still put up a valiant battle anyway.

And by valiant I mean he lasted until Newt said, “Please Tommy, please?” and then he crumbled quicker than a cookie that had been sat on.

Then everything changed when the WCKD corporation attacked.

(“Do they only have one employee or something?” Thomas asked, after Tomorrow Power won the day once more.

“No, they have a lot. Janson is supposed to be one of their best though, so maybe that’s why he’s the only one we’ve seen so far.”

“Huh. Interesting.”)

“You guys live in really fancy accommodation for students,” Newt comments at dinner that night. It was Thomas’ turn to cook so they were eating mac and cheese for the third week in a row, but it was food and that was what matters.

(Besides, it’s still miles better than that one month where every meal had to involve tuna because Teresa had drunkenly ordered enough to feed a small army. None of them ever want to see a can of the stuff again- some of them still have nightmares about it).

There is a moment of quiet and then Brenda pointed at Minho with her fork. “It’s all because he never learnt how to shut his mouth,” she said, with the gravitas of a prophet delivering wisdom to the masses. Everyone at the table started to laugh, except for Newt (who was confused) and Minho (who was not amused).

“Hey! It was a joke! How was I supposed to know that _his_ -” Minho pointed his fork at Gally, who was laughing hard enough that only Teresa’s hand on his shoulder was keeping him upright, “Sugar Daddy would take me seriously?!”

“…what?” This seemed to be becoming Newt’s favourite word in interacting with them, which either was a reflection on their general chaotic energy or Newt’s transformation into the shocked pikachu face. Both were very fair, though one would probably require a higher degree of apology.

“Gally’s sugar daddy bought us this place after Minho joked he should buy us a house.” Brenda shoved some mac and cheese in her mouth as if that was all the explanation needed, and to be fair it was pretty to the point. There was just the unfortunate problem of the five hundred questions that follow to people who don’t already know all this.

Newt was still doing his best impression of the shocked pikachu. “Okay, I’m gonna need a little more explanation than that.”

Teresa, once again accepting their role of braincell, drained their cup of coffee before taking over. “When we were in sixth form, we befriended a rich kid called Ben. Gally joked that Ben should be his Sugar Daddy, not knowing that Ben would immediately accept and chaos would ensue.”

And boy did chaos ensue. They all learnt pretty quick to be careful what they joked about around Ben because he would deliver. Thomas is still trying to deal with the damage of Ben attempting to buy out every fashion related store to build him three perfect wardrobes. A joke from Teresa led to Ben buying them an entire island and a permanent plane pass for first class seats for whenever they need to get to said island. Thanks to Brenda he donated enough to charity to singlehandedly cure poverty in Britain, and yet his money never seems to run out.

And of course, thanks to Minho they now have a motherfucking mansion.

(“Where do you even get all this money?” Teresa had asked, once. Ben had merely smiled at them in that way of his, looking far too like a regular ass sixth former for any of it to make sense.

“It’s not where I get it that matters,” he said, cryptically, “but what I do with it.”

“Right,” Teresa said, shuffling away, “Right.”

“Do tell me if you need anything!” he called after them, “All of my friends are my sugar babies.”

It was not the strangest thing to be said in a sixth form common room but it certainly got some looks).

“His completely platonic sugar daddy,” Thomas added, “It made for a very entertaining debacle when the two of them started pining for each other.”

“You have no right to talk about pining,” Gally grumbled, quietly, not denying the fact that the start of his relationship was like something out of a fanfic.

“Wait, so they weren’t dating from the start?” Newt asked.

Teresa snorted, gesturing at Gally as if his entire existence was enough of an explanation. “Of course not, who do you think we’re talking about here. We have hoodies to prove it.”

“Hoodies?”

“Thomas printed hoodies quoting Gally’s crisis.”

“Help! I think I’m gay for my Sugar Daddy.” Thomas quoted, and received a slap on his arm from Gally in response.

“I came to you for advice!” he said. “You’re supposed to be my friend! How can you mock my suffering like that?”

“I know, that’s why I waited until you and Ben sorted your shit out before printing the hoodies.”

“Okay,” Newt said, in a way that said that it wasn’t really okay but he was choosing to not think too hard on it. “Okay, so surely Minho would have known not to do this if this sugar daddy throws money around like its water?”

“Oh no,” Teresa said, “We met Minho and Brenda in uni so neither of them had preparation for the B man. They learnt the hard way- and by hard way I mean they stared financial security in the face and were made to deep throat it.”

“Couldn’t you have warned them?”

“Yeah, couldn’t you have warned us?” Minho echoed, glaring at them across the table.

“We could’ve but that wouldn’t have been as entertaining.”

“I mean,” Brenda said, “you gotta admit it was very entertaining, Minho. Plus its not like having a house is a bad thing.”

“True, but it was still bad for my heart to suddenly receive a letter in the mail with nothing but an address and some keys. Couldn’t he have just told me like a normal person?”

“Minho,” Thomas said, “My bro. My pal. My love. The salt to my sugar, the long island to my iced tea.-this is Ben we’re talking about here. Nothing about him can pass as a normal person.”

“…okay, you make a good point.” Minho looked at Gally, frowning, “Did he ever tell you what he does for a living?”

Gally shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. The closest I’ve gotten to the truth is learning that the guy whose always with him- Frypan, the food tech student?- is his right hand.” His rather impressive eyebrows did their best attempt to merge with his eyelashes, “It’s all shady as fuck to be honest, but- well. It’s Ben. We all know Ben, right?”

“The friendliest probably-a-crime-lord we all know,” Brenda agreed, and they all toasted to that, changing the subject to something that involved less analysis of a topic they all tried not to think about.

If someone were to hold Thomas at gunpoint and make him pick a favourite day of the week, he’d say Thursday. It’s not exactly the best day in the world (it’s kind of hard to find such a thing when life is like a possessed pogo stick going down a very steep hill), and weekdays hold their own special kind of pain, but it’s a good day! Thursday’s are house bonding nights so they all order in take out and fight over what to watch, which is always fun, and he doesn’t have classes on Friday so he can stay up as late as he wants without the pain of death the next day. He has his seminars on _The Witch Trials_ and _Frauds and Cons_ , which are very firmly his favourites and always a fun time. It’s one of the few days he and Minho have classes at the same time so they get to hang out in their breaks and the walk there, which is always enough to make Thomas’ day brighter.

(Any time with Minho is good time, for Thomas. He’s one of Thomas’ favourite people and even though they literally live together every minute still feels like something precious).

It was a good day, all in all, which of course meant that he and Newt run smack bang into the creepy WCKD man, which is a surefire way to ruin any day.

“Have a taste of my Negative Power, Cure Bomb,” the man yells whilst shaking his booty, which was not creepy at all, and then one of them monsters popped up again. Where Thomas was the only one around to deal with it.

“I hate my life,” Thomas said, before undergoing the needlessly long and dramatic transformation sequence. Like seriously, that thing took almost a whole minute- who had decided such a thing was necessary? This wasn’t an anime, people!

What follows is an exceedingly easy fight, considering Newt was what would probably be considered a hedge wizard if this were dnd and Thomas could literally just explodify the damn things, but still. It’s an inconvenience.

Thomas landed neatly on the roof next to Newt, face twisted in annoyance underneath the magic make-up that seems to be a mandatory part of magical girlhood. “I swear to God it’s like that creep turns up everywhere I go.”

“Maybe this dude just really likes seeing you as Cure Bomb and is targeting you so he can get an eyeful of them leggys?” Newt suggested, shifting back into a newt and crawling up onto the hand that Thomas’ offered.

“I doubt anyone puts that much of an emphasis on wanting to see my legs,” Thomas said, glancing down at said legs in the process. Most of what he saw was a lot of frills and bows, which was apparently an occupational hazard of being a precure. He digged it, but Brenda? Not so much.

(“I have nothing against skirts but this,” she'd said, gesturing for emphasis, “is just taking the piss. Like seriously, if we’re meant to do battle then at least have the decency to give us armour. Not- whatever this is.”

“I don’t know babe, you look adorable,” Teresa said, and then immediately backflipped into the air to avoid being shot).

“Your boyfriend would probably argue otherwise,” Newt says, and this has Thomas nearly falling off the roof.

“Boyfriend? What do you mean?”

Newt gives him a weird look, as if he is looking deep into Thomas’ soul and reading the word ‘idiot’ engraved there like a brand. “The beefcake jock who you flirt with at any given opportunity?”

It takes him a few seconds to put that together, and his mind is no less ?????????????? after the mental acrobatics. “Minho? He’s not my boyfriend, though.”

Now it’s Newt’s turn to look confused- or at least, as confused as a newt can look. “Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure I’d know if I was dating someone.”

“Okay, boomer.”

“Goddamnit Newt.”

(Newt corners Teresa later on that day, when Thomas was focused on doing his essay.

“Are Thomas and Minho really not dating?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“But- they’re so-“

“I know.”

“They literally-“

“I know.” They patted Newt on the shoulder comfortingly. “If there’s one thing about my brother you’ll learn it’s that he has the emotional intelligence of a 3 year old when it comes to figuring out crushes, and Minho is so deep in denial its amazing he can breathe at all.”

“Wow. Thanks, I hate it.”)

“You know,” Brenda said, “If I’d known I was going to have to regularly take time out of my day to punch people back into their bodies then I wouldn’t have gone for a STEM course.”

“Mood,” Teresa said, not looking up from where they had their face pressed to their laptop, furiously typing like their life depended on it. And to be fair it technically did- med degrees were famously merciless in their approach to assignments and if Teresa didn’t get this done then a professor would break into their bedroom and smother them.

Though to be fair, nobody else in the room was looking much better. Thomas and Gally were muttering to eachother in furious French, breaking off every now and again into English so they could rant furiously about their teacher, volume kept low only by the fact that Chuck was currently using Thomas as a place to nap on. Minho was watching youtube videos, crying in that way of someone who has a word document open with only the word ‘the’ written and has given up on everything.

All in all, it was a typical uni household around summative season. Newt had taken one look at all of them and decided he wanted nothing to do with any of it, which was very valid and also probably the only smart decision to be made here.

(Nobody sleeps that night and all in all nobody is happy, but at least they get the work done).

“These fights are a lot easier than the shows always made them look,” Minho said, frowning as the WCKD employee fled once more with promises that he’d be back. “I’m kind of offended.”

Thomas rubbed at his face, wishing he’d been able to have coffee this morning. As it turns out there are many issues with magical time travelling babies and stress is one of them. “I have no idea why you’d be offended about that but okay.”

“I mean, it’s boring. Like if we have to fight at least make it an interesting one.”

There was a moment or two where Thomas considered this, followed by a nod. “Okay fair. Blowing them up is almost too easy at this point and it feels weird.”

“You two are weird,” Newt said, from where he was sitting on top of Minho’s head. “Also please don’t jinx it like that- now all the enemies that come are going to be the higher ups.”

“You mean these weren’t the higher ups?”

“No, despite how Janson acts he’s just a general manager.”

“Huh,” Thomas pauses. “Okay now I definitely feel insulted.”

“Again: I don’t understand either of you.”

“Fair.” And then, after detransforming and shaking himself like some kind of dog, Minho said, “You know what, I need a break. Let’s go to the city.”

“Oh, somebody mark this down on the calendar! Minho had a good idea for once!”

“Oh fuck off.” Minho rolled his eyes but he was smiling, Thomas was laughing, Newt was confused but amused, and generally that was the status quo.

They go to the city because of course they do, Newt transforming into his human looking form to make it easier to converse with him. What follows is the kind of break they all needed- and by that I mean they stuff themselves with food, browse shops, and show Newt the sights, some he wanted to see and some he really hadn’t.

(“What is that supposed to be?” Newt asks, staring up at the human statue with the kind of horror of someone whose never seen one before and hopes to never see it again. “Is it some sort of oshimaida?”

“Oh, that. Yeah. No,” is the only response Thomas and Minho give and it is the only valid response. They give the man money and leave before they find themselves inflicted with nightmares).

They have a blast, and in the end the only reason they leave before it gets dark is because Minho has obligations as a student to attend to.

(“Fucking advisor meetings,” he grumbled, “If I wanted to be told shit I already knew then I’d find cis straight white men on twitter.”)

“I still can’t believe you can learnt Shakespeare off by heart,” Minho said, shaking his head. “Like what kind of nerd are you. Why would you subject yourself to that?”

Thomas shrugged. “What if a time comes I need to recite it to someone? Or all records of Shakespeare are lost and I suddenly have an instant ticket to being a rich man.”

“He has a point,” Newt commented, “In my time there was definitely no knowledge of a man named Shakespeare or anything he’d written.”

The response to that was two very confused stares, which is really the typical response to any mention Newt makes of the future.

“What is the Magical Time Travelling Big Bad’s problem with a playwright of all things?” Minho sounded like it hurt him to be saying this kind of sentence but it was a lot less than it was when this whole mess started. All in all he’s dealing pretty well and for that we stan one hoe; the Min-hoe.

Newt shrugged. “How would I know? I never exactly sat down to have a chat with the guy.”

“Huh. Well at least we know that if we ever run into him all we have to do is have Thomas start reciting sonnets and it’ll be an insta win.”

“Awwww, Minho, if you wanted me to serenade you then all you needed to do was ask.” Thomas batted his eyelashes, tossing his ponytail with a whip of his head like he was a theatre kid winding up to do a dramatic scene, and Minho choked on air.

“Wait, wha-“

“’Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day,’” Thomas started, two of his hands wrapped around one of Minho’s, and Minho immediately covered his face with his free hand, laughing so hard he was shaking. Then they were both laughing, standing at a bus stop whilst Newt stood there watching them with a smile, and Thomas felt like he never wanted this moment to end.

Standing there at the bus stop with their hands still clasped together, the sun going down and Minho’s laughter ringing in his ears like the kind of song he could listen to over and over again and never get tired of, Thomas thought, _I want to stay with Minho like this forever._

And then he thought, _oh fuck._

(“Newt,” he said, as they were walking back to the house, Minho having split from them to go to his advisor meeting, “I think I might be gay for Minho.”

Newt snorts, patting him on the shoulder with very little sympathy because he is a mean person. “Congratulations on finally realizing it, you fool.”

Thomas groaned, covering his face with his hands. Wonderful, because he didn’t have enough things to freak out about already).

(“Ben says to tell you that he’ll pay for your wedding.”

“Uh, thanks? I don’t think marriage is something to be thinking about yet, though.”

“That’s what I said but this is Ben. He’s already got funds set aside for Brenderesa’s wedding and probably ours as well. I think he’s also got money for kids if any of us have them but he hasn’t admitted to that so I don’t know.”

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again but your boyfriend is weird.”

“Yeah, I know, but the point stands; go get yourself a boyfriend.”

“I’m not going to make a move on someone who may not actually reciprocate, Gally. That’d be a dick move.”

“You know sometimes I forget how dense you can be, but I guess that ones on me.”

“Rude.”)

(“There there,” Teresa said, patting his back as he cried into their hug. “Anyone with a working pair of eyes can see that Minho is gay for you.”

“But what if he’s not-“

“Thomas, have I ever lied to you?”

“Yes. Many times, like that time you told me Sonic was our biological father and nobody told me the truth until I made him a father’s day card.”

“Have I ever lied to you about anything important?”

“…no, I suppose not.”

“Good. So trust me on this: Minho is in love with you.”

“…sounds fake but okay.”)

Because Thomas has very few subtle bones in his body, everything comes to a head less than a week after he figures out that he has FeelingsTM. It happens on a roof, as most significant conversations in Thomas’ life seem to, after Cure Bomb and Cure Fist fend off another attack from WCKD.

All in all, it was a normal day.

“I don’t know why you’re so shook by this, dude,” Thomas said. “I mean look at us! At this point, anything makes sense.”

“I don’t know, I still find it hard enough to believe that we’re magical girls. Adding time travel on top of that is just too much for the Minho man.”

“The time travel has been laid out from the start.”

“You underestimate how good I am at repressing things I don’t want to deal with.”

Thomas had to concede that point. If there were rewards for memory failure, Minho would probably win them all. “That is fair, you’re memory is a strange thing. You forget things like the fact that milk chocolate is different because they add milk to it but remember obscure conversations from five years ago.”

“Right! And on that note-“ Minho leaned over to where his backpack had been dropped, either not caring for the fact that they were currently sitting on a roof on one of the tallest buildings on the campus or for the fact that he was still transformed.

And then Minho said, with the triumph of someone who finally managed to do a shit after seven weeks of constipation, “AHA!” whilst brandishing a –

“Have you really been carrying around a box of make-up in your backpack?”

“Well where else was I supposed to carry it?” Minho grinned, presenting the box to Thomas in the same kind of way you’d present a ring. It was a very impressive selection and far more extensive than Thomas would have thought Minho would know how to do- he even managed to find all the eyeshadows and lipsticks in Thomas’ favourite colours, and Thomas doesn’t remember ever telling him something like that.

“Minho- what? How? What?”

“You mentioned that you wanted to get back into using make-up when you were having girl days and like I know Ben is already on the hunt to buy you the entirety of every brand ever but I thought that maybe I could help you start out small so I bribed Teresa into helping me hunt down some stuff you might like,” and oh. Oh, Thomas felt so very full in a way he had never known. This was Minho, his best friend and the only person who had ever managed to grab hold of Thomas’ heart like this- the person he felt comfortable around in a way he’s never experienced before.

This was Minho, the one who had gone from nearly starting a fist fight with Thomas on the first day they met to buying him make up and laughing over dumb shit with him and sharing a brain cell and looking at him like this, Thomas feels like a man seeing the sun for the first time and knowing that it is seeing him right back.

This was Minho, and Thomas loves him in a way that he hadn’t known he could. And the thing about this is that Thomas is what could kindly be described as ‘a reckless little shit.’ He’s never been great for holding on and waiting because action is in his blood, in his very soul, and he’s always ready to nyoom. In fact, if you were to announce now that Thomas was the son of Sonic then absolutely nobody would be surprised because boy, this is a chaotic mess and a half.

So it may not come as a surprise to you, dear reader, to learn that the fact that Thomas was able to keep his feelings for Minho quiet as long as he did was a genuine, bonafide miracle.

Apparently Thomas has been quiet for too long because Minho frowns suddenly, shifting on his feet. “Do you not like it? I can return it-“

“I’m in love with you,” Thomas blurts, hand tightening around the heart-deckled wand thingy, trying not to vibrate out of his skin and just run the fuck away. Minho has frozen, mouth open like he’s deepthroating air, the make-up box that caused it all still in his hand. He says nothing.

“You can do this, Tommy,” Newt whispers into his ear, conveniently placed and it helps to know that he’s not alone.

“I’m in love with you,” he repeats, mouth dry and heart ready to just fucking shoot itself.

Minho swallows, and very gently places the make up down on the ground, out of the way of where it might get stepped on. This is not recommended for those of you at home- makeup is very expensive and also very painful to step on. Please do not put make up on the floor; Minho is not, and should never be, a role model for how to live.

This is most clearly demonstrated as how, after placing the make up carefully on the floor and moving closer to Thomas-

(close enough that they could kiss)

-he headbutted Thomas with all the power of his very sturdy skull.

“Wow,” Newt said, helpfully, “You two are somehow worse at this than fanfiction.”

Let it be known that Thomas has never felt as betrayed as he does in this moment. It hurt in many ways, physically and emotionally (though admittedly more in the physical department. Minho’s skull is hard enough you could break a box over it and he wouldn’t even flinch), and he glared balefully at the idiot he had the stupidity to fall in love with.

Minho at least had the decency to look horrified. “Shit- I didn’t mean to do that! Are you okay?” He reached for Thomas, gently probing the injured area, and Thomas might have had a heart fluttering like a swooning maiden if not for the fact that Minho had just headbutted him.

“You know Minho, generally BDSM is kept to the bedroom.” And then, after another few seconds of Minho fretting, “Seriously though, what the actual fuck, Minho?”

Minho hesitated, his hand lingering on Thomas’ face before dropping away entirely. “I panicked. It was the first thing that came to mind and I moved without thinking.”

“The first thing that came to mind at a confession was to headbutt me?”

Minho looked at their feet, sheepish. “That’s how they kiss in the Mandolorian.”

“…wow,” Thomas said, in the way of a war veteran who has finally returned from the front lines after 69 years, “this is my life now. I’m in love with a nerd.”

“Says the one who became fluent in a dead language because of a book series.” And then, “So I guess we’re both in love with nerds.”

“Oh!” Thomas pressed a hand to his chest like some kind of swooning maiden. “Is this a confession?”

“Yes, it’s a confession,” and Minho is trying to sound annoyed but he’s failing miserably. A hand reaches for Thomas’ and laces their fingers together, holding close, holding tight. “I’m in love with you, Thomas.”

“That’s gay, bro,” Thomas says, but he’s laughing and Minho’s laughing and it feels like he’s out of gravities control, like his blood has been filled with bubbles, like there’s so much happiness in his chest that he could outshine the sun. In that moment it feels like the world has narrowed down to the two of them and he doesn’t notice Newt yeet away to give them some privacy, he doesn’t notice anything except the way Minho moves closer, face lit up like the polar star to sailors trying to navigate the seas.

In that moment there is no WCKD corporation or time travel or summatives- there is only Minho and Thomas, Thomas and Minho, the two of them together at last.

When they kiss they are both smiling and it feels right in a way that words can never hope to describe. It feels like coming home, like Happy Ever After, and so this is where their story shall end. There is something wonderful about Happy Endings, after all, something so very beautiful about love, and so let and us not ruin it with the things that come after.

This was the story of love and the moments that led up to it- the story of Thomas and Minho and all the people who matter, of the many hearts that all beat as one. We thank you for your time, dear reader, and now it is time say goodbye until the time it is ready to tell a different story- one with the same characters, the same setting, the same threads, but where the focus is on something else. Something less warm.

This was the story of friendship turned to love- the kind of story that deserves a happy ending, and so let us not ruin it with the moments after. Let us not ruin it with a story of war, of hardship, of precure vs WCKD, of the truth behind Chuck and Newt and the future from whence they came. Those are stories that need to be told, to be heard, but not here- not now.

There is a face behind every mask, a truth behind every villain, a story within a story within a story, and this story is this:

Once upon a time there were five friends who lived in a house fit for royalty, love in their hearts and in their lives. A talking newt and a magical time travelling baby come barreling into the narrative, bringing with them the kind of issues you’d expect to come from a magical time travelling baby, and the five find themselves fighting as the warriors of legend, Precure.

There is love in them, a power so great it could bring the universe to its knees, and the love shared by one boy and one-sometimes-a-boy is one that needs a cupid to sort out. Sadly cupid isn’t available, so they’ll have to make do with a talking newt instead.

Once upon a time, there were two people who loved and were loved in turn.


End file.
